When discrete pieces of turkey, such as comminuted turkey meat or turkey emulsion, are packaged, it is aesthetically appealing for the turkey to be packaged with a section of turkey skin, as the skin makes the resultant packaged article look more like a whole turkey. Problems have occurred in the past with packaging because when skin is room temperature or refrigerated, it is limp or flimsy in nature. Aligning the limp skin in a bag was difficult, since the limp skin could not stand alone in a bag. One answer was to have the bag disposed horizontally with the skin horizontally disposed therein on the bag bottom panel, but then filling the bag horizontally with emulsion presented the drawback of bag neck area contamination, as compared to vertical filling. Thus, to achieve vertical filing, the skin was draped around the stuffing horn nozzle of a vacuum packaging apparatus. A bag was then vertically placed around the skin and then turkey emulsion was injected into the bag. But as a result of this contact with the horn, there was the drawback of a contamination of liquid, fat, or pieces of turkey at the bag mouth end, i.e. bag neck area. This is the area that is clipped or heat sealed closed after the bag is filled with turkey, so the contamination interfered with bag closure. In fact, one patent mentioned below, U.S. Pat. No. 3,673,041, is directed to a special heat seal bar for squeezing contaminants such as liquids or fatty substances out of the sealing area before the sheets of plastic fuse together and in those cases where solid particulate contaminants are found in the sealing area utilizing steam flushing to clean the surfaces prior to sealing. Also, regardless of horizontal or vertical packaging, the resultant packaged skin often looked wrinkled.
Many apparatus for vacuum stuffing or packaging are well known. One is the Belam vacuum meat press marketed by Belam, Inc., Oak Brook, Ill. Many patents disclose such apparatus, for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,563,764, 3,703,064, 3,760,556, 3,853,999, 3,928,938, 3,950,919, 4,132,048, 4,251,976, 4,586,320 and 4,672,793 and UK Published Patent Specification No. 1,516,498, the disclosures of all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Also, some patents are specific to the bag closure means of the vacuum packaging apparatus, the closure being accomplished by heat sealing with a heat seal bar such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,673,041 or being accomplished by clipping the bag neck with a clipper apparatus such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,740,921. The disclosures of these two patents are incorporated herein by reference.
The Package of turkey can be frozen or refrigerated for storage. Either before or after storage, the turkey package can be subjected to cook-in. For turkey, cook-in is a long slow process, typically about 1 to 4 hours, and can be up to 12 hours, at a temperature typically of about 160.degree. F. (71.degree. C.) to 200.degree. F. (93.degree. C.) and can be from about 131.degree. F. (55.degree. C.) to 212.degree. F. (100.degree. C.). Cook-in films are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,411,919, 4,606,922, and 4,469,742 and commonly assigned published European Patent Application No. 269325, publication date of June 1, 1988 (counterpart of commonly assigned copending U.S. Ser. No. 932,138 filed. Nov. 17, 1986), the disclosures of all of which are incorporated herein by reference. If the turkey has been packaged in a bag of heatshrinkable film (i.e. oriented film, which is further discussed below), then during cook-in the heat-shrinkable bag will shrink about the turkey to form a tightly fitting package. For certain cook-in applications, such as oven roast, the bags are perforated, for instance with round perforations from needles or with oblong perforations from pointed-end knife blades. A perforating apparatus is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,038,198, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. Oblong perforations are disclosed in Australian Published Patent Application No. 62078/86, published Apr. 9, 1987, corresponding to U.S. Ser. No. 785,419, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.